And tomorrow's political framework is the cumulative result of actions and inactions today.
The AnybodyButRepublican politics is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy: you are in favor of a mass political party rooted in social movements on the left, but you feel others won't go for it, so you don't do anything to create it and do everything to discourage others from even considering it seriously, and then, voila, no mass political party rooted in social movements on the left emerges and US politics continues its rightward march -- the outcome to which your initial action as well as inaction, multiplied by those of others who felt like you, made its contribution.
>An independent leftist party would enter elections not with any hope
>of winning at first, but with a view to gainig a platform for its
>ideas and changing the nature of mass politics over the course of
>years and decades. Such a party may also consider that the road to
>change doesn't run exclusively, or even primarily, through electoral
>politics.
That's the key.
John Lacny jlacny at earthlink.net, Wed Nov 10 15:44:24 PST 2004:
>All of which is proof of my point that neither the Democrats nor the
>Republicans are "parties" in any real sense. They are electoral
>coalitions that are made up of interest groups that are effectively
>"parties" in all but name.
The Democratic Party isn't a "coalition." If it were, each affiliated organization in the coalition would democratically select its delegates, and votes of delegates after collective debates, weighted by relative sizes of organizations they represent, would determine the coalition's political platform, long-term/medium-term/short-term goals, and strategies and tactics to achieve them. -- Yoshie
* Critical Montages: <http://montages.blogspot.com/> * Greens for Nader: <http://greensfornader.net/> * Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * OSU-GESO: <http://www.osu-geso.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://sif.org.ohio-state.edu/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>